Sage
Sage is a mutant. Aside from her name, Tessa Niles, nothing else is known of this secretive woman publicly. Within the X-Men however, she is a known mutant telepath with a computer-like mind, capable of infinite recall. She is however a long-time ally of Professor X and was found to have acted as his mole inside the Hellfire Club. Her name, is likely an assumed one. Background Tessa was born in the Balkan Peninsula, near the Adriatic Sea. Young and without family, she was homeless for a time, then in a harem when she began to grow. Her time there is not something she discusses, though she was involved in Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. Learning to fight and survive in these harsh conditions, her mutant abilities began to manifest, and her astounding mind terrified her. Tessa found herself in the Hindu Kush mountain range, barely past the age of puberty. With a compulsion she could not understand, she entered a cave and found a man, buried in an avalanche, his legs crushed. While wary of the foreigner 'Charles', she still helped him to safety with no thought for herself. Then, with Professor Xavier watching, she singlehandedly drove off an attack on a UN convoy and brutally murdered the worst of the bandits, shunting the emotions to an unused portion of her brain while he watched her mind manifest in all it's potential and force. Charles was not long in recruiting her, but not for his X-Men. This girl would not do for normal operations. No, he had a deeper plan for her. Giving her personal, private instruction only, she was shaped and molded into someone worthy of the gift she'd been given. Truly trustworthy, she was a born weapon and the spy he sorely needed against the greatest foe he knew at the time: the mutants of the Hellfire Club. Tessa was recommended to the club by all the best. She was given a chance by a relative unknown, a Lord by the name of Sebastian Shaw. Deeply probed, all of her secrets were brought out by the White Queen herself, Emma Frost. No part of her brain was left unaltered, and she revealed herself to be an incredible mind, but easily plied into a tool useful to Shaw himself. He needed a personal assistant, and Tessa was the best. She quickly took over all of Shaw's administrative duties, along with being his personal assistant. She was a capable bodyguard, but in no way as good as he was himself, which meant that she was never a threat to him. She was his computer system, never needing a paper trail, and the primary reason why he was completely untouchable to the authorities. There was never anything to track, since it nothing was ever written down or typed into a database. She was irreplaceable. And she was Xavier's spy, all the time, her partitioned mind allowing her to be scanned as deeply as anyone could wish but without giving up even the tiniest hint that she was reporting everything to Xavier. Manipulating Shaw to make certain that as few died as possible, and the rest of the club in the background. Never underestimate the lord of the manor's secretary, for she is truly the one who rules. Sebastian's rise to power came with Tessa's assistance. He gained the rulership of the club by cheating the current Black King, Elias Bogan, in a game of cards. He won this bet, wagering his entire fortune, by Tessa's subtle assistance...and her simple trick of counting cards and miniscule study of Bogan's gambling tells. She was infallible, and after that day so was he. But Bogan never forgot, and after he found out some of Tessa's abilities, he knew her role. But running the Hellfire Club is something she does so well, she has a name of her own. The Black Rook. But she has another name, known only to Charles Xavier, and feared by the entire Hellfire Club when spoken. Only in hush tones do they speak of the one who's ruined so many of their best plans. Who is the one called Sage? Someday, they say, we will find out, and then we will kill him. Slowly. Tessa, are you there? Find my coat, we have a hunt to begin. Personality While I understand a need for a personality, pragmatism and empiricism are my trademarks. Please attempt to remain within the realms of observable reality if you are attempting to gauge me. With that being said, I am these things. I am an empiricist. This states that I gain my knowledge from sensory experience, and not from guess or conjecture. I do not take kindly to those who rely on gut instinct, though I am willing to allow that their results do tend to back up their statements on a significantly high amount of occasions. I simply do not share their predispositions. I have, and am, a partitioned mind. This is important when dealing with me, in that I am never distracted. I am sometimes unfocused, but that is usually due to the situation at hand. However no matter what I am doing, that is only one part of my brain and is operating indepently from the part to which you are speaking. You have my full attention, at all times. Of the amount to which you are allotted for your current issue. While I will always be guided by logic, this is a choice. I am not in fact a computer, and I have emotions just like any other human being or mutant on the planet. For example, I have both darkness and light within me. I have great hope for Charles Xavier's dream, and the merging of the worlds has brought forth more equality for mutants than any other event in the history of our great changes. I also have great darknesses. While the heroic mutants were being taught to dance in the spotlight, to save the weak and downtrodden I was being taught another path, and even endless study of Xavier suggests only saddening reasons. What was different about me, that I was not chosen for the path of light? Instead I was taught to hide, and to be thought evil by those very same heroes. But even with this, they are family. To be protected, in what small ways I can manage. Logic is my weapon. They will come to no harm in my hands, for they are the path of right. If my hands are bloodied, they are not. It will do. Logs First Player *2018-01-09 - The Game Begins - Tessa, the Black Rook of the Hellfire club enters the game as a player. *2018-01-17- Rook to King Four - Tessa somehow fails to cover her tracks. Accident? *2018-01-23 - The First Rule of the Game - is that you don't talk about the game. Second Player *2018-10-29 - Night Terrors - An experiment on sleep goes wrong, and an old enemy emerges. Category:Marvel Feature Category:Marvel Hero Category:New York City Category:Marvel Taken